Tapping and Untapping Emry for Fun and Profit

Sometimes Wizards of the Coast prints a card that just makes you scratch your head.

Like, seriously... haven't we seen all this before?

Stitcher's Supplier is one of the best graveyard enablers ever printed. Snapcaster Mage is one of the best value creatures ever printed. Frogmite is... well listen Frogmite isn't so impressive by current Modern standards but the card has done a lot of winning and there's no argument that affinity is a broken mechanic.

And now we get all of that on one card!

Emry, Lurker of the Loch is an extreme amount of power packed into an effective one-mana card, entering a format where Mox Opal is legal and there are many powerful artifact-based strategies. While she can slot into existing artifact decks, finding the right Emry deck should be high on everyone's priority list.

Ross Merriam sent me this list which we discussed for SCG Philly last weekend, where he would go on to play it while I took the safe route with burn hoping to prey on all the Mox Opal decks.

The deck is based on the old Jeskai Ascendancy combo decks that work by using Fatestitcher to repeatedly untap your lands while you cast more and more one-mana spells. Eventually you find more Fatestitchers and generate mana and eventually attack with your now large creatures. Emry adds a whole new element to the deck, as you can use her to recast your zero mana artifacts over and over again to trigger Jeskai Ascendancy as much as needed while generating mana. Emry is also a great value card that lets you draw more cards while you wait to get set up.

While the deck feels favored against other Mox Opal decks because it can goldfish much faster, that does make it a bit more vulnerable to disruption. We also lost to Burn and Infect, which both seem like extremely difficult matchups; Burn offers a very fast clock backed up with Eidolon of the Great Revel and potential spot removal for your creatures, while Infect is too fast and hard to interact with. More sideboard cards would be needed.

Still, despite our mediocre record there is certainly something here. Emry is odd because it makes decks that aren't normally vulnerable to creature removal need to rethink that concept, but once we find the right shell for Emry she is going to be very good.